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Bricknell, Samantha. 2012 ‘General Firearm Characteristics.’ Firearm Trafficking and Serious and Organised Crime Gangs; Research and Public Policy Series No. 116, pp. 33-36. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 1 June

Relevant contents

A total of 2,750 seized firearms were recorded in the NFTD [National Firearm Trace Database] as of March 2012 (see Methods in first section on the compilation of this data).

Where information was recorded on the date of seizure (n=2,341), all but 10 were seized between June 2002 and October 2011. Of the 10 that were recovered earlier, one was seized in 1977 and the others between 1995 and 1999. Of these seized firearms, 43 percent (n=1,184) were rifles, 34 percent (n=960) were handguns and 16 percent (n=448) were shotguns (see Table 7). Only a small number of prohibited machine gun models have been recorded, comprising less than one percent (n=26) of all seized firearms. Some of these firearms were seized as part of multiple-firearm recovery events, but the quality of the data precluded determining how many firearms were seized individually or as part of a larger assemblage and what these multiple seizures consisted of. The largest number of firearms seized as a collection was 102, recovered in New South Wales from individuals involved in firearms trafficking.

Other larger seizures associated with SOCG [serious and organised crime groups] included the recovery of 85, 45 and 35 firearms, all from entities involved in the illicit drugs market, and 60 firearms from a firearms trafficking venture. There was a small group of large seizures from non-SOCG too - 55 unregistered long-arms from a licensed firearm owner in New South Wales and seizures of 21 and 22 grey market-sourced long-arms from individuals in Queensland…

A total of 542 firearms or a fifth of all firearms seized were recorded as having the serial number defaced. Three-quarters of these were handguns, possibly reflecting the long-prescribed legal requirement for handgun registration and hence the impetus to conceal the identity of items leaving the licit market…

Other, typical modifications come in the form of shortening or converting long-arms to produce a handgun-like model. Around one in 10 (9%) of seized long-arms had undergone a category change (to Category H), the overwhelming majority of which (77%) were found in the possession of SOCG…

ID: Q11767

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